


Ashes To Ashes

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Series: Infinity War Fix It [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 16:52:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14525046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: They say in space, no one can hear you scream.They lied.





	Ashes To Ashes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AsterRoc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsterRoc/gifts).



Nebula stared at the ashes that used to be Drax and Mantis and both Peters. It shouldn't have hurt to see it, especially the boy, but it still did. She was surprised the magician faded to ashes as well, why would he fall?

Then again, Thanos never cared for what was fair, only what he wanted.

"Why are we still here?" Tony Stark cried, the anguish clear and painful to hear.

"The magician seemed to think there was a reason for it." Nebula looked out over the blasted remains of Titan. "There's no way to beat him. He cares for nothing now, nothing but his own plans. I've come close to killing him, but it's not enough. Maybe nothing ever will be."

 _I don't want to go,_ the boy had said. Did Gamora say such a thing?

"I don't believe that! I _can't_ believe that! There has to be a reason, something we missed-" he began, desperation and fear in his voice.

"Gamora is dead. My sister, Thanos' favorite daughter, the one he always trusted, is _dead._ She's dead and he got the Soul Stone in exchange for it. There is no love, no weakness, no way to undo what he's done!" Nebula cried, almost surprising herself with the depth of her rage.

"I refuse to believe that. I refuse to be beaten. Peter-"

He broke down, collapsing to his knees and covering his face in his hands. Nebula made no move toward him, knowing full well that there was no comfort in her at all. Maybe once upon a time, before Thanos destroyed her world, as he had countless others. Maybe if her heart wasn't cybernetic, if her body hadn't been replaced with parts that made her more machine than mortal.

Tony looked at her, misery etched into every feature. "He deserved better."

"They always do," she agreed.

"Don't you care?" he raged. "Don't you feel anything? Don't you have a heart?"

She thumped her chest, and it made a hollow sound. "He replaced it when my flesh one failed. Like he replaced my limbs, my eyes, my mind," she said flatly, ignoring the look of growing horror on his face. "It was to make me better, more like my sister. There is no kindness, no weakness. Only winning, meeting the objective, no matter the cost."

He let out a long breath. "Asshole dad doesn't even begin to cover it, then."

Nebula stared at him. "We were called the daughters of Thanos, but he was no father."

"And your sister?" Tony asked, brows furrowed in concern.

"Everything was a battle for survival, even with Gamora. _Especially_ with Gamora. I wanted a sister. An ally. She wanted to win, and she did. Always." Even with replacement parts, Nebula had never been able to measure up. In death, Gamora was an even more impossible standard.

 _I was a child. I was trying to survive,_ she'd said not too long ago. They'd both been children, and Thanos had pitted them against each other constantly.

"You're injured," Nebula said, taking in his condition with a dispassionate eye. "Your treatment is temporary at best."

Tony let out a huff of impatience. "It doesn't matter now."

"He won, but that doesn't mean we can't still get revenge," Nebula said, seething fury in her voice. Revenge for herself, for the sister she could have had, for the life that was never going to be.

Pain and dark humor rippled across his features. "I guess that makes you an Avenger, too."

Nebula got him to his feet, and he nearly collapsed again in pain. "I will fix you, make you better able to fight," she said, voice hard and pitiless. Inside her, something quailed and screamed, but there was no time to examine that. "Then we will find him, and we will take him apart piece by piece so that he feels even an ounce of the misery that we do."

Nodding, Tony stumbled beside her as they moved toward the ship that Peter Quill had piloted to Titan. "Definitely an Avenger."

***

Nebula took apart her leg, ignoring Tony's inquisitive stares. She could feel a glitch in it, something not working right after being tossed into solid rock, and she had repaired various parts of her body off an on for years. It was routine, something she didn't really have to think about.

Unfortunately, that meant she had too much time to think about _everything else._

"Tell me about her," Tony asked, voice quiet and hushed. He wasn't moving, it was something she had demanded of him when she had set various machines to repair the organ damage from the stab wound, but she hadn't quite thought he would comply. Something about his demeanor just screamed that he would do as he pleased.

"What's there to say? She's dead. There's no coming back from that."

Her voice was flat and emotionless, but that screaming thing inside of her only grew louder. It shouldn't have been Gamora. She was the good one, the perfect one, the one that was strong and had that moral center she hated to compromise. Nebula had none any longer, and she knew for years that she wasn't ever going to measure up. It was a cruel quirk of fate that she was the one to survive.

"I never knew her," Tony prodded.

She glared at him, lips drawn back in a snarl. "And now you never will. She's _dead."_

"I heard you the first thousand times," Tony shot back in irritation. "Why was she so important?"

"She's gone now!" Nebula roared at him. Her fists were raised, tools clutched tightly in them, as if she would strike him with them. He didn't even rear back in fear, the fool, and just had that look of sadness on his face the way he had when the child had collapsed into ashes.

"How you live and how you die are important," he said, voice hoarse as if he was the one that was screaming. "It matters."

Nebula threw the tool in her hands at the wall, not even satisfied when Tony flinched or they stuck deeply into the wall. "She was the good one," Nebula snarled at her. "She lived here, these were _her_ friends, she had the name and the accolades and the love. She was the one they turned to for comfort, she was the one that they all respected. She could have led the Black Order, she was better than Proxima Midnight. Anything she failed at, it was on _purpose,_ and she was willing to sacrifice everything, even her own life, it meant that others were safe. But she couldn't do it when he was tearing me apart, and she gave up the Soul Stone to save me, _and it wasn't worth it!"_

They both were silent, and she looked down at her open leg, whirring mechanics all fallen still. Her vision blurred, but it wasn't from damaged optics.

Tears. Nebula was _crying._

"There are a lot of trite sayings on my planet for shit like this," Tony said, weariness in his tone. "It's always awful to hear it, but it's worse when you think you're the only one grieving."

"Shut up."

Of course Tony wouldn't, and he even scooted closer to her. Nebula couldn't move, her head still bent and eyes still leaking these useless tears, hands at her sides and useless, useless, _useless._

"You're taking me back to Earth, right?"

"What's left of it."

"What would she do?"

Nebula snapped her head up to look at Tony, the anger still simmering in her gaze. "Thanos might not have killed you, but maybe I should."

"No, hear me out," Tony said, lifting up a hand. "Because I have to think that we're alive for a reason."

The magician had said it had to be this way, Nebula remembered. There had to be a plan. He had to have known something that she didn't; she had been alone and singleminded in her determination to kill Thanos, so it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination for that to be so.

"Now, I'm good at mechanical things, and as good as your tech is, I can see a dozen things I can improve on that," he continued, nodding toward her leg. "We need to come up with a strategy, something he hadn't considered. He's one man, and there's at least two of us. There's got to be more of us on Earth, right? Not everyone is dead." He choked up, eyes closing for a moment. "We need to regroup, keep moving, keep doing something-"

"You're a fool if you think you can stop him."

"Gamora would try, wouldn't she?"

Her hand shot out to grab his throat before she could even think, but Tony only seemed resigned to it. It was a look she recognized all too well, and she let go of him with slow, deliberate movements.

"We're alive," Tony said quietly. "We have to use that. We have to do something."

"We have nothing," Nebula said just as quietly, eyes sliding away from him.

"I built my first suit of armor in a cave with scrap metal and salvaged tools, a car battery for a heart," Tony told her in choked syllables. "We're in a space ship right now, Nebula. There's a lot more tech in here than I had in that cave. I can fix this. I have to fix this. This is _on me_ somehow, and I have to do something about it."

"All I know is how to kill," Nebula said slowly, ponderously. "I destroy and I get destroyed. I can't build anything."

That had been Gamora, too. Her throat closed up and her eyes closed at the memories. Gamora during training, building teams and using an innate sense of strategy to get away from the blades and traps, and Nebula had been too small and too slow, left behind to get cut to pieces. She had crept into the infirmary afterward, bringing a better hand that she had found for Nebula to use. _Next time, you can blast it,_ she had said, surety in her tiny voice. _Make a new door if you can't use the one I made for you._

"Maybe you don't have to," Tony murmured. Nebula opened her eyes and watched him hesitantly reach out to touch her arm. "But there's more to you than death and destruction. Maybe we just need to find it. Your sister loved you, and that's why she offered herself up." Nebula's breath caught, a choked off wail and that snaking pain in her gut growing more intense. "She saw something in you that's more than death. And they loved her, her friends that were out there. I can tell that, and you can tell a lot about a person by their friends."

"You can?"

"That's what they say anyway."

Nebula snorted. _"They,"_ she said dismissively.

"Yeah, _they,"_ Tony replied with a wry smile. He folded his hands in his lap and she missed the sensation of touch on her arm. "But the thing of it is, sometimes you can use what _they_ say against them. They don't expect anything else, so they won't be prepared for it. I've seen-" He choked again, and this time Nebula touched his folded hands as he had touched her arm. She watched him pull himself together, try to paste on a mask that didn't quite fit anymore. She recognized that expression, too. "I've seen a lot. You have, too. If nobody expects anything from us, they'll be surprised."

"She was as good to me as I allowed her to be," Nebula said suddenly. "I loved her and I hated her, and I only told her that I hated her and wanted to kill her. I never said I loved her. I said I wanted a sister, but I never said more than that."

And now she was dead, maybe nothing but ashes, like all of her friends.

"There's been enough death," Tony said. "Let's go be the kind of people your sister was."

"Your Avenger friends better be alive," Nebula said, pulling her hand away abruptly so she could hobble to the wall and retrieve her tools. "You have building to do, and I have killing to do. I'm going to destroy everything Thanos is building and leave it in ashes."

It was the usual plan that she had, and it had apparently kept her alive so far. That would have to carry her a little further now.


End file.
